Surprising Science

A £10m project is underway to develop a mechanical set of pincers to perform risky procedures.

I recently stumbled upon an excellent essay by Steven Poole in Aeon Magazine on teleology (the widely abandoned philosophical idea used to support arguments for intelligent design, that in nature, […]

After decades of searching, still no evidence for dark matter has emerged, and some scientists are ready to abandon ship.

Imperative CEO Aaron Hurst describes we our evolving from an information economy to an economy of purpose. Hurst is the author of The Purpose Economy: How Your Desire for Impact, Personal Growth and Community Is Changing the World

Have you spotted a fire rainbow before? They make the clouds appear to shine in different colors due to the ice crystals of distant cirrus clouds catching the sun’s light. […]

Camping this summer? Keep your eye on the sky, because you may catch sight of a light show. From NASA: From a camp on the northern shores of the Great […]

A dazzling bouquet of cotton candy? That would be one way to describe this gigantic dust pillar and star-forming region known as the Cone Nebula. NASA explains this photograph snapped […]

The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies has identified 96 food products currently on the shelves of US grocery stores which contain microscopic pieces of metal. Do you know what’s in your yogurt?

Technology innovator Stephen Wolfram argues that the universe may function less like a math equation and more like a computer program, demonstrating extremely complex behavior which could be based on relatively simple lines of natural code.

Nebula’s are star-forming regions rich in interstellar clouds of dust, hydrogen, helium and other ionized gases. How else do they keep the star factory running? On Tuesday, NASA released this […]

For the all the hullabaloo that accompanied Deep Blue’s famous triumph over Russian chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov, there remains a strategy game at which humans remain undefeated.

Similar to how affection-detecting machines were used in the film Blade Runner, the Brazilian researchers’ methods could possibly be used to anticipate crime.

Just as the Slow Food Movement criticized the inferior quality of fast food, the emerging Slow Science Movement says the rate at which scientists are pressured to publish makes for low quality science.

New software applications that aim to organize your inbox, which can at times grow like a malignant tumor, take different approaches to simplifying how you send and receive mail.

It was twenty years ago that researchers first proposed the idea of rapidly inducing hypothermia to buy time for surgeons whose patients were bleeding out on the operating table.

Wright wanted to give people the option to escape the city at a moment’s notice, but today there is no escape, at least there is no outside to escape to. But what about escaping to the inside?

PetMatch uses machine vision algorithms to match uploaded photos to those of pets who are available for adoption from shelters and rescue groups.

Despite previous research and anecdotes about the germiness of airplane bathrooms, scientists found that some dangerous pathogens lived for days on seat-back pockets and armrests.

In a new paper, two Dutch researchers suggest that locally-sourced meat could come from “village-scale” culturing of livestock stem cells in a biotech reactor.

To all the external things that bring people together, add genetics: A new study discovered that husbands and wives were more genetically similar to each other than they were to other randomly selected individuals.

A network of doctors in Washington DC have begun officially prescribing their patients an ancient form of preventative medicine: exercise.

U.S. and Mexican scientists are beginning to see the first results of their joint venture to restore the dried up Colorado Delta.

Home may be where the heart is, but a new study suggests it’s also where the stress is for a modern workforce facing more responsibilities than ever.

If there are aliens out there, they likely passed by our planet, considered it an unsavory galactic truck stop, and kept going, continuing on their hunt for enlightened life. Aliens […]

An imbalance of gut bacteria may play an important role in America’s obesity problem, in addition to its addiction to innutritious food and sedentary lifestyles. 

Using fossil records to measure cranial capacity through the millennia, researchers have found that as we become increasingly domesticated as a species, the size of our brain continues to shrink.

The herbicide used to rid wheat and soy products of diseases that limit crop yields are increasingly associated with a host of illnesses.

Nearly every society has vastly more wealth today than ever before. So why doesn’t the world’s burgeoning wealth afford its citizens more leisure time?

Physicists at the University of Cambridge have found a theoretical foundation for the existence of wormholes, which are tubes that connect two different points in space-time.

Dickson Despommier on how vertical farming can help us meet the challenges of feeding a growing global population.